Stories for March 19, 2018

This week in the Classic FM Chart, 'The Glorious Garden' has managed to hold onto its No. 1 spot from last week - and Murray Perahia jumps up 20 places with his Beethoven Piano Sonatas!
The Classic FM Chart sees Alan Titchmarsh and Debbie Wiseman holding the No. 1 spot, with their brand-new album of original poetry and symphonic music. And it's good news for Andre Rieu with his album Amore, which stays strong at No. 2. The only change in this week's top five sees Einaudi's Islands and Sheku Kanneh-Mason's Inspiration switching places at No. 3 and No. 4 respectively. At No. 6, Murray Perahia has leapt up a huge 20 places with his album of Beethoven Piano Sonatas, while Sing Me Home by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble has also leapt up seven places from No. 14 to No. 7.
There are only two new entries this week: Language of the Heart by the Santiago Quartet at No. 9, and The Complete Recitals on Warner Classics by Christa Ludwig at No. 12. However, the bottom end of the chart sees a number of re-entries, including Ramin Djawadi's soundtrack to Game of Thrones Season 7, Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man, and two albums from Ludovico Einaudi.

On WCRB's CD of the Week, the soloists from the Montreal Symphony call on their virtuosity to bring out the light-heartedness in Beethoven and Richard Strauss.
Symphony orchestras are miraculous for what they can do as one complex entity. They possess a special chemistry that tunes their musicians directly into one another. And smaller miracles tend to crop up, too. Groups of orchestral players get real joy from stepping out of the bigger entity and finding camaraderie and spontaneity in chamber ensembles. Here in Boston, we've got the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and the Boston Cello Quartet. Now, in Montreal, the Soloists of the Montreal Symphony have begun a new series of recordings, and WCRB has chosen their first as our CD of the Week.
READ THE FULL WCRB: Boston ARTICLE

Johnny Cash built his mythic self to fit his actual voice, behaving as if it had arrived from somewhere else, as if the voice (like a flame) had traveled a great distance to get here. This was correct. As the story goes, Cash's voice presented itself to him late in his adolescence. It just showed up one day, unannounced, there to be misunderstood and wasted, like any other blessing. His mother was a simple woman but she referred to his voice as The Gift.
Its snarl, however full of bombast and sanctimony it might have been, also had a lazy cruelness to it, a sense of malignant power held in reserve. It was like an ink drawn from some prior place. Cash would always imply that his voice did not come from his own earthly person but from a spectral elsewhere, outside of him, coming on like the Holy Ghost, selecting him and then commencing its ravishing. There was no way he could have prepared himself for its arrival. He had been working when he received it, simply doing his chores, adding his blood and sweat to the family engine, keeping on keeping on. "When I was 17," he wrote, "I had been cutting wood all day with my father and I came in and I was singing a gospel song, ‘Everybody's gonna have a wonderful time up there, Glory hallelujah.'" PHOTO: Getty/Bloomsbury Publishing/Salon)
READ THE FULL Salon ARTICLE

The Cranberries have just announced they will be releasing a reissue of their Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We for its 25th anniversary as well as a brand new album. The band, as Rolling Stone reported, had already started working on the reissue before singer Dolores O'Riordan death in January, which caused the project to be put on hold. The surviving members of the group, however, have revealed they will get back to the project and complete their new album, on which O'Riordan recorded her vocals before her sudden death. The band said their hope is to release the new record in the beginning of 2019.
READ THE FULL mxdwn.com ARTICLE

The music (and film and tech and everything else) at South by Southwest almost always looks to the future. Emerging acts and novel sounds and panels try to make sense of a music industry turned inside-out.
So what a treat to wander into a club set from '70s rock experimentalist Todd Rundgren at the end of Thursday evening's slate of music at 1 a.m. There are usually a few legacy acts or established mainstream performers each year, but it's rare to catch a singer-songwriter who has been pushing the outer edges of rock since the '60s - and has a worthy new collaborative album to add to that legacy.
Rundgren had some chart hits in the U.S. ("Hello It's Me" and "I Saw The Light" among them), but today, he's more of a cult figure and deep inspiration for today's crop of psychedelic acts and electronic producers. His new LP "White Night" has collaborations with current electronic boundary-pushers like Trent Reznor and Robyn, and nods to his classic rock legacy with turns from Joe Walsh and Steely Dan's Donald Fagen.
There's always pleasure in discovering something brand new at SXSW, but there's just as much as rediscovering something older that turns out to still sound brand new. "You're playing checkers and I'm playing chess," he sang on "Let's Do This," from his newest LP. That's been true for 40 years and counting. PHOTO: Gordon Lamb
READ THE FULL Los Angeles Times ARTICLE

Internationally acclaimed jazz pianist Vijay Iyer is one of the few artists to play two different sets on the Rosies Stage at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival. Iyer brings out his sextet to play both nights of the Festival on March 23 and 24, presenting original compositions on both nights.
Speaking from New York, Iyer said it had not been a tough decision to travel so far to get to Cape Town. While it is difficult to organise and schedule a six-member band made up of people who also have their own careers, playing in South Africa is something he has wanted to do for a while. "My mother-in-law is from Durban so I have been hearing stories for 20 years now," said the Grammy-nominated composer/ bandleader.
READ THE FULL IOL ARTICLE

Throughout all of the changes the Star Wars galaxy has gone through, from different trilogies of films from different directors, to the different characters that have taken center stage, there has been one constant throughout it all: John Williams.
The legendary composer has been featured in every entry of the main saga, but Williams' score has yet to receive the recognition that it has for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Fans who purchase the movie have access to a score-only version, comparable to what writer and director Rian Johnson calls a "silent film" with Williams music as the only sounds. And now you can watch a teaser for that version in the clip above.
Johnson revealed this version of the movie during a live Q&A, saying it was one of his passion projects for the home video version. READ Comicbook.com
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Following her acclaimed album with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim, Tchaikovsky & Sibelius Violin Concertos, Lisa Batiashvili releases Visions of Prokofiev, a new album with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Daniel Hope returns to core repertoire with Journey to Mozart, an intimate exploration of Mozart's world comprising both works by the titular composer and pieces by his contemporaries Gluck, Haydn, Mysliveček and Salomon.

‘Twenty-five years on from the station's launch, this year's Classic FM - Hall of Fame proves that the nation's classical music tastes remain both fascinating and ever-changing,' said Classic FM presenter John Suchet. The 300 pieces of music in the Classic FM Hall of Fame were played on air over the Easter weekend.

Crossover Media Projects with Karl Jenkins

Sir Karl Jenkins presents Symphonic Adiemus, the new album of epic proportions. Brand new recordings of the greatest moments from the Adiemus series features an extended orchestra of over 100, including over 20 layers of classical and ethnic percussion, and a choir of 80. With judicious use of multi-tracking, there are sometimes over 400 participants heard at any one time.

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster in Wales, Sir Karl Jenkins has composed a major new choral work, Cantata Memoria – For The Children,to be released on a Deutsche Grammophon album on 7th October and premiered at the Wales Millennium Centre the following day. The concert will feature some of Wales' most celebrated artists including Bryn Terfel, Catrin Finch, Elin Manahan Thomas, David Childs, as well as contributions from Michael Sheen and Siân Phillips. Cantata Memoria was commissioned by S4C, the Welsh language TV channel, to mark 50 years since the Aberfan disaster, when 116 children and 28 adults lost their lives after a colliery waste tip collapsed and engulfed Pantglas school and nearby houses, devastating the local community in South Wales.

Welsh-born Karl Jenkins, who has been called: "the most popular living composer", writes music that speaks to audiences across the world. Following the huge success of:Adiemus, Jenkins brings you: The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace on EMI Classics. In a manner reminiscent of Britten's War Requiem, "The Armed Man" interpolates a number of different texts within the usual Mass form. Malory, Dryden, Swift, Tennyson, Kipling, The Koran and the Hindu Mah bhar ta contribute to a compelling account of the descent into and terrible consequences of war.

Welsh-born Karl Jenkins, who has been called "the most popular living composer", writes music that speaks to audiences across the world. Following the huge success of Adiemus, Jenkins has now completed his new piece Requiem, which is being released on EMI Classics.